Swell and Break
by breathewithyou94
Summary: The night of the ICCA's, Beca kisses Jesse. Later, that same night, she also kisses Chloe. How can something so amazing end up making your heart simultaneously feel like it's flying and like it's breaking?
1. C Major

**So I've only seen the movie once, but I am officially hooked. I've been reading fic nonstop since I saw it, and I thought I'd go ahead and give it my own try. Most likely going to (attempt to) make this a multi-chap. We'll see how that goes.**

* * *

It'd be kind of romantic, the whole kissing-after-winning-nationals thing. In a predictable, rom-com kind of way, at least.

Except, with this rom-com, there was one little factor that maybe would have instilled a bit of doubt into the audience's mind, if they'd had open enough ones. One little factor that could have changed the way this chapter of her story ended, Beca knew.

But she's trying not to think about that right now, because Jesse—sweet, talented, kind of dorky Jesse—is kissing her over a row of chairs in the audience after they just freaking _won_, damn it, and Beca doesn't have the time, right now, to analyze whether that feeling in the pit of her stomach is happiness or dread or loss or longing—no, Beca does not have time for that. Right now.

But later, in Amy and Cynthia rose's hotel room, almost drunk—okay, almost _really_ drunk—and laying on the couch, Beca's mind is only occupied by the girls' sounds of different stages of drunkenness and by counting the tiles on the ever-moving ceiling she's staring at. And since that doesn't really require any thinking—especially once she gives up on counting, after a while—Beca's mind inevitably drifts to Jesse and to that one small factor that could have, maybe _should_ have changed everything—

"Heyyy, Becs! Beca, Becs, Beeeeeee…" Chloe starts off almost yelling, but trails off to a near-whisper. Beca slowly sits up at the sound of her friend's voice so that Chloe can practically collapse against her smaller body. "How're you doin', Bec?"

Normally, Beca wouldn't giggle, but she's a little more than tipsy, right now—_fine_, she's drunk—and, so, she giggles at the way Chloe's slurred words sound to her inebriated mind, as well as at how the rarely-used nickname coming from Chloe Beale's mouth makes Beca feel. "Pretty awesome, Chlo," she replies through a hiccup.

"Good, that's good, me, too," Chloe says with a smile, wrapping her arms snugly around Beca's waist as her head lies on Beca's shoulder. "I'm glad we won."

"So am I—"

"You kissed Jesse."

The change in tone is very abrupt, causing Beca's head to snap over in order to face Chloe. She hesitates before answering, not being able to see Chloe's face and, therefore, not being able to tell how she's feeling.

Beca, in turn, feels remarkable more sober, right now.

"Um, yeah, I did," she finally says.

"Was it nice?"

"Uh, I guess?"

"So you liked it, then?" Now, Chloe lifts her head to look back at Beca, her arms falling limply around the smaller girl as her own big blue eyes stared so openly.

Not really. "Yeah, it was nice." Beca clears her throat. "Like I said."

Chloe pouts a bit, and if the girl wasn't so drunk, Beca could swear that she's doing it to purposely get under Beca's skin. "Did you like it more than you'd like kissing me?"

Beca feels her skin flush from something other than the alcohol. Before now, she hadn't realized how quiet the rest of the room had gotten. The pounding of her own pulse in her ears must have made her deaf to the goings on around the two of them. Silence now permeated the air. Beca dares a glance around the room to make sure nobody is lying on their back, but soon enough, her eyes are drawn back to the blue ones in front of her. "Um," she stutters, swearing that Chloe is closer now than she had been before.

Chloe giggles—not so uncharacteristically, for her. She leans forward until their noses rub together, something so adorably _Chloe_ that Beca's having a hard time distinguishing between what is truly meant and what is done out of the flavored vodka running through the ginger's veins. Beca had stopped drinking long ago, because the taste had gotten unbearable; the smell of alcohol on Chloe's breath makes Beca's chest hurt, but she doesn't dare move away.

"What if I kissed you right now?" Chloe says in little more than a whisper. Her voice sends shivers throughout Beca's body, but she finds herself speechless.

Her lips part ever-so-slightly, however, and that seems to be enough of an invite, because suddenly, Chloe's lips are brushing against her own, so softly, so gently, so—not like Jesse.

And Beca feels her heart simultaneously swell and break at the feeling. Her hands somehow find themselves buried in Chloe's red hair, forcing her closer so that Beca can get as much as she can from this moment.

Because she can always pass it off on the alcohol, right?


	2. J Minor

**Thanks to everyone who's favorited, followed, and commented :) Every little thing means the world, so thank y'all. Here's chapter 2!**

* * *

She's kind of surprised when she wakes up the next morning and remembers _everything_. And it's not even the kind of "remembering" where your mind is in a blissfully ignorant state for a moment until everything comes crashing down on you—no, it's the kind of remembering where, as soon as Beca's mind is conscious, she's thinking about Chloe and Chloe only.

It doesn't really help matters that they're kind of tangled up together, either.

All Beca sees when she opens her eyes is the bright red of Chloe's head on her chest. The older girl has herself half-draped on top of Beca, long arms wrapped tightly around her waist. Their legs are tangled together, and Beca tries to push that niggling voice out of the back of her mind—the one that realizes how _nice_ this feels, because it shouldn't.

She cheated on her boyfriend the day they got together, for Christ's sake. What is wrong with her?

Beca gently slides out from underneath Chloe's (perfect) body and realizes that maybe she _doesn't_ remember absolutely everything, because they're both missing their tops and when did _that _happen?

It's now that she kind of starts to maybe-panic, just a bit.

She grabs a shirt off the floor—not hers, she vaguely realizes once she's in the hallway—and makes her way down to the breakfast bar to get something to alleviate the pounding headache she's suddenly suffering from. She's pouring herself a cup of coffee when he sneaks up behind her (or, at least, that's what it feels like).

"Good afternoon, Phil. Or are you Stu? Alan, maybe?" he says in his ever-jovial tone, though, now, there is a hint of nerves lying underneath it all. Like he doesn't exactly know how to proceed after yesterday's… events.

"I'm sorry?" Beca says after a moment, brow furrowing as she takes a sip of her coffee to try and clear the fog in her mind.

His eyebrows raise, as they always do when Beca doesn't get one of his movie ref—"_The Hangover_? You _really _haven't seen that one, either?" He sounds so astonished, and Beca's so hung-over, she can't really care to do much more than shake her head in a silent apology. "Wow, we are _so _watching that when we get back to Barden."

She takes a big gulp of coffee.

Jesse's hands jut into his pockets as he rocks back on his heels a bit, shoulders slouching as if he's forcing himself to relax. "Okay, so, listen…" Oh, boy.

Beca raises her eyebrows and leans against the counter, waiting for him to continue.

"I really enjoyed yesterday. You know, not the getting our asses kicked in a singing competition by a bunch of girls, but, y'know, the kissing you thing… That was pretty amazing." She smiles a bit, at that. "And, so… I'd like to take you out on a date. A real date, not just, like, hanging out at the station or something. We don't even have to go to a movie."

Jesse's looking at Beca with that damn hopeful look in his eyes, and she wonders, for a moment, how easy it would be. _Look, Jesse, I'm sorry; you're a great guy, but last night was just the result of an adrenaline rush from winning and loneliness because I'm falling in love with Chloe Beale but she'll never love me back. I'd love to stay friends, though._

Along with that, though, comes the image of his face after she says it. The pain in her heart when the one person who's been there for her this entire year doesn't want to be there any longer. Because she broke his heart.

Because, not to be vain, but, she knows that Jesse is in love with her. It goes with that rom-com cliché: the stubborn, closed-hearted girl finally opens up to and falls in love with the boy who's been in love with her for the entire movie.

And as much as Beca doesn't want to be _that girl_, she doesn't want to be alone, either.

The girls are waking up, when Beca returns to the hotel room. Her eyes hone in on Chloe, slowly sitting up, topless, on the couch. She watches as Chloe runs a hand confusedly through her red hair and looks around the room, trying to remember the previous night. And when their eyes meet, Beca can see, in her eyes, all the memories crashing down on her in that moment Beca had forgone.

Chloe's lips part slightly, and Beca can tell that she doesn't know what to say. She watches as the older girl's eyes drift down below her face—Beca had forgotten that she was wearing Chloe's shirt instead of her own.

The smile that appears on Chloe's face warms Beca's heart. It's Aubrey that shatters it.

"Did you really only get coffee for yourself, you asshole?" The blonde's tone reminds her of the first day they'd met, and it successfully snaps Beca out of the ginger-induced haze she'd been in.

"Actually, this is for Chlo. I drank mine on the way up." There's an implied sticking-out-of-the-tongue in her tone, somewhere, but Aubrey simply huffs as Beca moves to hand the hot beverage to the girl still sitting on the couch.

"You're lucky you two are cute together," the blonde continues haughtily, throwing back her own blankets. Both Beca's and Chloe's heads snap over to Aubrey in embarrassment, even as they realize that all the alcohol must not be out of her system. "Whatever happened to that Treble you were kissing, though, Beca?" Aubrey keeps going, not noticing both girls' stricken looks.

Beca literally _gulps_. She feels like shrinking into the carpet, because this _so _was not the way she wanted to talk to Chloe about this. "I'm, um—well, we're dating now. We're going out on our first sometime this week, once we get back to Barden," she chokes out, caught between avoiding Chloe's gaze and checking for signs of the other girl's reaction.

Surprisingly, it's Aubrey that says something, even if it is a simple, snappy "_What?_"

Fat Amy comes to her rescue, though, scrambling over from the other side of the room to announce, "You guys, checkout deadline is in ten minutes!" This, of course, leads to _everyone_ scrambling around to find room keys, lost items, and generally clean up so that it doesn't look like there were a bunch of college freshmen (and two of-age co-eds) drinking the night away.

Beca knows it won't last forever, but she's thankful for the small allowance of time she has to think about what to say—even though she does have to witness that heartbreaking, wounded-puppy look that Beca never wanted to see on Chloe Beale's face.


	3. C-Sharp

**Hey, y'all. I know it's been a little bit, but I've been busy lately-graduating and whatnot. But that's all done, now! I'll most definitely be bored this summer, so I'll be doing a lot of writing and such. Though there will be times in a couple of weeks where I won't have much access to the internet, I will be sure to make up for those times. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!**

* * *

The bus ride back to Barden is much louder than the one to the ICCA's was. The girls are constantly singing—minus Beca and Chloe, at least. Not that Beca is sulking, or anything; she just has a lot of things to think about.

Like the look Chloe'd had on her face when Beca told her she was dating Jesse, officially, now.

Aubrey keeps trying to get Chloe to join in on the musical celebration with the rest of them (between spared glares Beca's way), but any singing done by the red-head is only half-assed, at best. Not that Beca is paying any particular attention to her. Nope.

When they pull up to Barden, each girl grabs her own bag and sets off the bus. Chloe is moving slower than the rest of them, and so Beca decides to stay behind until the other girls are gone. Seeing that Aubrey isn't going to leave the two of them alone, however, Beca sighs and pushes forward until she's standing next to the older girl.

"Hey, Chloe, um…" Beca says unsurely, knowing that her nervousness is showing in her voice. "After you put your stuff up, do you wanna stop by my room? I think that we should talk." Chloe bites her lip, and Beca hurriedly adds, "I can ask Kimmy Jin to leave for a bit—she won't mind," even though Beca knows she totally would.

Silence engulfs them for a few minutes, with Aubrey looking back and forth between the two of them. Eventually, Chloe gives a slow nod. "Just give me a few minutes, and I'll be there." Another beat, and Chloe manages a pitiful smile—Beca's cue to leave.

Beca races back to her dorm—because how many minutes is "a few"? Dumping her duffle onto her bed, and without turning around while she hurriedly unpacks, she rushes out, "Listen, Kimmy Jin, I know I haven't done many things for you—I've even been more of a burden at times—but I really need you to do me a favor, just this once, and make yourself scarce for a while, because Chloe and I had a fight—well, not really a fight, but something happened, and—"

The door slams shut. Beca simply stares at it in wonder for a moment, before it opens again and Kimmy Jin's head pokes around it. Hesitantly, as if she doesn't really want to be saying this out loud, she speaks, "Fix things. You're good together." Then, she slams the door shut again.

Well, damn it all.

What the hell is she supposed to do? Beca flops back onto her bed, ignoring the clothes still left in her duffle bag. She can't lose either of them. But how is she supposed to keep both of them?

Jesse is in love with her—no matter how she explains things, she knows that he won't be willing to be _just_ friends with her. If she calls off the date, she'll lose him, she just knows it.

But she's in love with Chloe. Or on the way there, at least. Previously, she'd thought that there was no way she and Chloe could be together—no matter the amount of flirting she'd done with Beca throughout the year, because Chloe was like that with everyone. Right? But, now, she and Chloe had kissed. And Chloe had seemed remarkably hurt that Beca was now dating Jesse. Was there a way she could date Jesse and have Chloe be not-hurt by it? Would she be able to move on and not make a big deal out of it?

Beca hoped so, because that was the only solution she could come up with.

A knock comes at her door, and Beca hurriedly pushes everything off and under her bed. "It's open!"

Chloe slowly walks into the dorm room, closing the door gently behind her and leaning against the frame. "Hi."

"Hey." Beca bites her lip and pats the space beside her, coaxing the other girl over.

She sees Chloe take a deep breath as she walks, and again before she speaks. "Well, Beca, you said we needed to talk, so…" she sits down and gestures to the younger girl. "Talk."

Beca swallows audibly and doesn't speak for a moment. "I, uh, actually don't really know what to say," she finally chokes out, immediately knowing that they were the wrong words, as Chloe's eyebrows furrow together in a rare sign of agitation.

"Well, let me start then," Chloe says harshly. "Why would you kiss me last night, if you were dating Jesse? I mean, do you even _realize _how messed up that was, Beca? To get my—to make me think that you liked me, just to turn around and throw it in my face that you like that _Treble _better?"

Beca's heart hurts more and more with each word coming out of Chloe's mouth. Things are much worse than she'd thought, Beca realizes. There's no way Chloe would be able to just forgive and forget, with this. She doesn't know what to say to fix this.

So she kisses her. Again. And, at least Chloe isn't saying anymore hurt words, for the time being. Beca feels the desperation clawing its way out of her and into the kiss, so she pulls back after just a moment, before she lets it escape in a bad way.

In the silence after the kiss, Chloe's eyes are closed, and her hands are clutching at Beca's shirt. Their foreheads are pressed together, and Beca's whispered words are breathed across Chloe's lips.

"I do like you. I like you, so much. But I can't lose Jesse. I can't be alone again, not after…" Not after knowing what it's like to have people that care about you. "I need you, I need both of you."

Chloe takes a deep breath and slowly pulls away. She lets go of Beca's shirt and stands on shaky legs. She makes it all the way to the door before Beca realizes that she's leaving.

"Chloe," she gasps out, scared and lonely and hurt.

The other girl stops by the now-open door, but she doesn't turn around. "I can't just be your play-thing, Beca," she almost spits out. "I won't be your dirty little secret."

And with that, she slams the door.


	4. Four-Part Harmony

They end up making out on Beca's bed later that night, since Kimmy Jin still hasn't returned from "making herself scarce". Chloe is rough, a side Beca never thought she'd see in the red-head. It's not like Beca's _complaining_—far from it. Chloe is growling and pulling Beca's hair and digging her nails into Beca's skin, and it makes Beca hotter than Jesse could ever dream of doing.

It's when Chloe bites her neck and grinds her hips down on top of Beca's for the tenth time in a row, choking out a low _fuck, Beca!_ that Beca's body trembles and shakes—her hands clench into fists and her hips buck wildly as wave after wave of pleasure course through her in orgasm.

It only takes a few moments for it to hit her that Chloe just made her come before she'd even made out with her boyfriend for the second time.

Chloe's panting into her skin makes Beca think that the singer had joined her in falling over the edge of bliss. They're both silent for a while, the only sounds in the room being their quickly slowing breaths.

"I don't like this," Chloe whispers after a while, so quietly that Beca has to strain to hear, "but if this is the only way I get you?" She pauses and leans up a bit to suck softly on the sore bite-mark of Beca's neck. Beca gasps, and her head turns in the opposite direction to give her more room. Chloe runs her tongue soothingly over the throbbing mark before pulling back and continuing her speech, "I'll take it."

Then she's gone, and Beca is left wondering whether all of it was a dream.

* * *

Twenty minutes later finds Beca still in her bed—but with Jesse, instead. They're not kissing. They're not even talking. They're just lying there, side-by-side, staring up at the ceiling together.

Jesse had knocked, Beca had said it was open—hoping, stupidly, that Chloe had come back for more—and Jesse had entered, asking if he could join Beca in laying on her bed. So they did just that.

She knows Jesse wants to say something. That's just who Jesse is. She's just waiting for when he does—and part of her wishes he never would.

"Well, as _fascinating _as your ceiling really is, Beca, are you ready to go?" he says finally, and she feels him turn his head to look at her.

He doesn't get it. He can't appreciate the silence, the simplicity, of laying on your back and just staring up at the ceiling. Jesse doesn't understand the concept of a comfortable silence; he always has to fill it with music, movement, actions. Even working at the studio, he could never simply work: he had to make jokes and conversation and dance to the music. And Beca loves music more than anyone, really, but even she can do with a bit of necessary stillness every once in a while.

Beca briefly wonders if Chloe would be able to appreciate it.

"Go?" she says aloud, turning her own head to look right back at him.

"Uh, yeah, on our date?" he says with an incredulous smile on his face. "What, you've forgotten about me that easily?"

Beca only stares and minutely shakes her head. "No, uh, sorry. I didn't forget." She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, and when she opens them, she is able to put a real smile on her face. Well, as real as she can get. "So, where are we going?"

Jesse's grin gets wider as he stands. "It's a surprise." At Beca's raised eyebrows, he continues, "No, no, come on. You'll love it, I promise." He holds out his hand for her to take, and she grabs it with only a moment's hesitation.

* * *

_Now_, they're kissing. And Beca is trying her hardest, her best, to think of him and only him. But she has to raise up on her toes to kiss him, so that's kind of impossible, because Chloe is kind of, sort of the maybe _perfect _height, you know?

He presses her against the wall outside her dorm—a good-night kiss, how sweet—which Beca takes to mean that she has to be the one to slow this down. That little, devilish side of her conscience is bugging her to "even the score", since she's _technically _slept with her not-girlfriend, but not with her boyfriend. Her actual boyfriend.

She's successful in slowing the kiss down, gently pushing him away so she can settle back on her heels. She looks up at Jesse, at his goofy grin and bright, hopeful eyes—and she gives in to that devil.

"Do you want to come in?" she rushes out, completely out of the blue and awkward, as usual.

His eyebrows raise. "I—are you serious, right now?" His smile goes crooked as his eyebrows furrow together.

Beca gives him a small smile in return. "Yeah, I just… Yeah."

Jesse's staring at her, now, studying her. She feels her confidence falter right before she sees the hopefulness leave his eyes.

"You don't really like me, do you?" Jesse says, that crooked smile still in place.

Now, it's Beca's eyebrows that rise. "_What_?" She shakes her head and presses further back against the wall. "Where did _that _come from?"

Jesse nods, his lips pressing into a thin line. He points to her. "That, right there." At Beca's confusion, he continues, "Usually, when you're trying to reassure someone, you step closer to them—it shows them that you _care_." He pauses, and just _looks _at her. "It's body language, and you know what?" He gets louder, stepping closer and waving his arms around. "You've been giving off these kinds of signals all night. You wouldn't even _look _at me before we left, you wouldn't hold my hand or anything while we walked—and you are _definitely _not the kind of girl, _Beca_," he almost spits her name, and she feels her heart break just that much more, "to sleep with a guy on your first date with him!"

He's about three inches away from her now, and his face is this mixture of angry and hurt that she's never seen on him before. He shakes his head and steps back again, taking a deep breath and _finally _looking away. "Not unless you felt like there was something you had to make up for."

Beca shakes her head. "I _do _like you. I do, Jesse." She's desperate, at this point, because this is what she was afraid of—losing him.

Jesse looks back at her. "Well, Beca, I can't do this back-and-forth with you. I know you don't really want to sleep with me tonight, so why would you invite me in?"

His eyebrows raise as he waits for her response, but she can't find one to give. Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

She's stuck.

He nods.

He leaves.

* * *

She knocks on the door to Chloe and Aubrey's dorm. She can't stop herself from bouncing on her toes—she has to do _something _to keep from breaking down right now.

Aubrey answers, and Beca literally _feels _the desperation seep out of herself when she speaks. "Aubrey, I really need to see Chloe. Please," she adds. Her hands are deep in her pockets, and she pushes them even deeper.

Aubrey shakes her head. "Chloe cried herself to sleep, _Beca_, so no, you can't see her." Beca just now notices that she's been blocking the doorway with her body.

Beca's eyebrows furrow together. She feels the tears start to leak out as she says, "You're not her damn bodyguard, Aubrey, and I _need _to see her!"

She steps forward, but Aubrey shoves her back, making her stumble into the opposite wall. Aubrey takes a step out towards her. "The fact that you can't look past your own feelings right now to realize that I just told you she _cried _herself to sleep because of what _you _did—that really says a lot about you, Beca." She shakes her head again, looking at her with such disappointment—but Beca already can't feel anything but the breaking of her heart. "You _need_… to leave."

She shuts the door.

* * *

**Any comments, questions, or concerns? Jussayin'... Reviews are very much welcome, and thank you to those of you who have been doing so! It's much appreciated!**


	5. Symphony in the Key of Amazing

**Last chapter, you guys! I might make a sequel, I haven't decided yet. Anyways, this marks the first multi-chapter fic I've ever finished (properly)! Yay, me! Anyways, I hope y'all enjoy. Let me know what you think! :)**

* * *

She just wants to forget everything. The world doesn't exist, at this point. She doesn't want it to. Her dad has come, multiple times, in attempts to get her to go to class, but she's managed to fake illness, for now.

Now, though, it's not her dad banging on the door.

"Damn it, Beca, I know you're in there!"

Her head lifts up, because she truly thought she'd never hear that voice again.

"Beca! Open the door!"

She pops out of her bed in record time, racing barefooted across the floor. The door swings open, and Beca can't keep from throwing herself at Chloe. Her arms are now wrapped around the slightly-taller girl's waist, and Beca wishes that she'll never have to let go.

"Jesus, Beca, you were scaring me," Chloe says, a bit softer, now, as her arms wrap around Beca, in return. She awkwardly walks the both of them into Beca's room and closes the door behind them.

Beca takes a shaky breath. "I thought you hated me," she gasps out, trying her damnedest not to break down in sobs.

She can literally hear Chloe's eye-roll in her tone of voice. "I already told you where I stood with you. Aubrey was… She was just being protective of me, like always, but she shouldn't have done that. Kept you from me, I mean. But, okay, Bec, enough of that for right now."

Beca feels her heart soar at the use of Chloe's nickname for her. Chloe pushes her away, though, and towards Beca's bed. When they sit down, Beca thinks that there's much too much distance between them.

"What do you mean, I was 'scaring' you?" Beca says, after a moment.

Chloe levels her gaze at her. "You haven't gone to class for three days, Beca. You haven't talked to anybody. What do you think?"

Beca's eyebrows raise high. Incredulously, she retorts, "Christ, Chloe, did you really think I would kill myself or something?" Beca knew, though, that—given a few more days, a week, maybe—she might have come to that point. She didn't want to say that, though; she didn't want to be the girl who became suicidal because of a broken heart.

Chloe sighs heavily. "I don't know, Beca. I was just worried. Now, are you going to tell me what's wrong?"

Chloe's staring at her intently, but Beca can't bring herself to meet her gaze. Instead, she stares down at her fidgeting hands. And stays silent.

Chloe sighs. "Beca, talk to me. Did something happen with Jesse?"

Beca hesitates for a moment, but nods. "I, um… I was going to let him fuck me, but… He figured out that I didn't like him. He said I wasn't the kind of girl who would offer sex on the first date, unless I was trying to make up for something. Obviously, he doesn't know about us—" Chloe scoffs, interrupting her. Beca frowns.

"Oh, come on, Beca; what we did wasn't sex. Not yet, anyway." At Beca's raised eyebrows, she continues. "I mean, that's like saying that dry-humping your boyfriend is having sex, and it isn't. It's like. Second or third base, I forget which."

Beca's mind is confused, what with this new realization and Chloe's nonchalance about it all. Then she thinks about it. "So that means…" Her eyebrows furrow. "How… how do girls have sex, then?"

She feels like an ignorant child, asking that, but Chloe's eyes darken, so she kind of doesn't care about that right now.

Chloe shakes her head, though. "No. No, I won't let you do that. We are _talking _about this, Beca. No distractions." She's firm in her speech, so Beca only nods and looks back at her hands.

It's silent for a moment, oddly enough. Beca can feel the question waiting to seep out of Chloe, so she looks up to meet her gaze questioningly.

"You, um," Chloe starts softly, "said that you don't like him." It comes out more as a question than a statement.

Beca's eyes drop again—she doesn't know why, but she just can't help it right now. "Yeah, uh, no I don't. I just—he's my best friend, and I didn't know what to do to keep him, so I was just trying to give him what he wanted," she says slowly. Her heart is pounding faster in her chest with each passing moment.

"…But, you _do _like-?"

"I like you, yeah," Beca rushes out. "Very much so."

Chloe reaches out to put her hand on Beca's knee, so Beca looks back up at her, again. "That's why you came to see me? Because Jesse had just left you, and—oh, God, then Aubrey wouldn't…" She brings a hand up to cover her mouth. "Oh, Beca, I'm so sorry. I never wanted you to feel alone like that. You're not, I promise. I just needed—"

"No, Chloe," Beca interrupts. "Aubrey was right. I was being selfish, with everything. I shouldn't have—I didn't want to hurt you. Ever. So, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Her hands are grabbing at Chloe's, now, desperate for her.

"Oh, Bec, baby, it's okay," Chloe says softly, pulling her close and stroking her hair. "I'm sorry, too. You always, _always_ have me, okay?" She pulls back to press their foreheads together, putting her hands on each of Beca's cheeks. "I won't go anywhere, as long as you won't. Okay?"

Beca nods hurriedly, and then they're kissing, and it's everything Beca wanted it to be. There's a hole in her heart where Jesse was, but Chloe is lessening the ache. It might be gone, altogether, one day, which makes Beca realize just how stupid she was for almost letting a great thing like Being With Chloe Beale out of her grasp.

Right now, though, Beca's heart is swelling with the incredible joy at the feeling of Chloe taking the rest of her soul into possession. She feels it wash over hear like a wave, rushing over her chest and washing down to break on her toes, then back to the top of her spine to send tingles coursing down her body again.

Kimmy Jin takes the hint, somehow, and doesn't come back that night.


End file.
